Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Discovering Teenagers' Risky 'Game' Too Late

In Pauline W. Chen’s Discovering Teenagers’ Risky ‘Game’ Too Late, in February 25, 2010’s New York Times, a chilling new ‘game’ has perked up the ears of many doctors and parents. Apparently, as Chen reported, kids ranging in age from as young as 7 all the way up to 21 have picked up a new thrill called the choking game. The goal is to attain a natural high from strangling oneself to the point of nearly loosing consciousness but too many kids push themselves too far and wind up dying instead. Unfortunately, two years ago the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had 82 reports of those who lost the choking game on accident.

Experts feel that it is possible that children just do not realize how dangerous it is to participate in such an unusual and harmful activity. Dr. Nancy E. Bass of Case Western Reserve University hopes that doctors will be in the best position to prevent this from increasing in popularity by talking to both parents and kids. The biggest problem is that parents themselves do not know what to look for so the word must go out.

Personally I would think that the best way to educate people about this would be to use the statistics to show how people really do die from this so-called game. Parents and doctors should mention any way that a lack of oxygen to someone’s brain is dangerous in its own right even if you survive. There are plenty of other ways to have a good time, this simply is just a terrible idea and makes no sense at all.

4 comments:

WOW. This sounds like something a drug abuser would do to get a small high. It is terrifying to think that children are doing this for fun. I think each school should hold an assembly to address the possible consequences of playing this "game."

Back in the day, some of my friends thought that this was an entertaining game. I watched as one friend randomly choked another, let him fall, and catched him as he came back. While they had funny being idiots, I was utterly scared. Any lack of energy to the brain is a potential problem. Personally, I think it is more fun to play scrabble. The words drive you crazy after a while, there is a thrill, and the board spins. That's enough to make me dizzy.

I agree, this is definitely extremely dangerous and needs to stop ASAP. They should not waste any time and use special programs in school to show how bad this is and how it can damage lives. Also, parents need to step up and watch how their kids "play games" and really teach them a lesson.

About this blog:

This blog is an ongoing discussion among members of two sections of Brookdale Community College's English 122 class, taking place in Spring 2010. This class teaches critical thinking and research writing skills, using the news stories of the day as a starting point for investigations. This blog seeks to encourage conversation about important cultural events and developments among community college students.

What each member contributes

Each class member is required to create a new post every week. This post will contain: a link to the new article (or several links, if the student is interested in seeing how the story has been handled by different news outlets), a 3-5 sentence summary of the story, and a paragraph response to the story. This paragraph should identify a controversy raised by the story. If there is no controversy, choose a different article. After identifying the controversy, one might imagine the repercussions of supporting one side over the other, connect the article's contents with other unfolding new stories, or express a viewpoint or opinion about it. These paragraphs should always use a quotation from the argument to help create a strong dialog between the author of the article and the author of the blog posting.

Each class member is also required to comment on another student's post once a week.

All posts are "labeled" with the writer's name so that each student's work can be followed in the label index.